Post by lukepemberton on Aug 10, 2011 15:04:54 GMT -4

Today I will begin dipping down from my usual ~50 km orbit to an orbit that will allow me to image the Apollo sites from about 20 km away!

This will allow me to obtain images of the Apollo sites that are ~4 times sharper than my current best images!

Once I reach my new temporary orbit, I'll take images of and around the Apollo sites between August 14 and 19.

After that, I'll return to my 50-km-orbit until December.

That is excellent. Really loook forward it. It's a shame it will only be in the lower orbit for 5 days, since it took several months to take the Apollo images at different sun angles and captue different features from the distrubed regolith.

This is an hypothetical question, but if Kaysing and Rene were alive, and this provided them with proof to admit they were wrong. Would people here forgive them if they said sorry. It's an issue I have with existing hoax proponents. I find it hard to accept their reversal to the the truth given how much damage they have done.

'In the poor actors moon books of lies, many say the moon smelled like spent gunpowder. How does an aroma fill﻿ the air in a vacuum?' - NASAHOAX

'All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.' - Galileo Galilei

'It's fundamentally dishonest to use that man's authority without also his expertise.' - Jay Windley

Post by echnaton on Aug 10, 2011 15:42:12 GMT -4

Would people here forgive them if they said sorry. It's an issue I have with existing hoax proponents. I find it hard to accept their reversal to the the truth given how much damage they have done.

I am not clear that they have done any great damage to the world nor that they have done anything for which I could give them my forgiveness. It is not as if being a denier of Apollo is really going to lead others into something radical that would materially harm people. In contrast to a holocaust denier, where a political motivation would by more likely to be lurking under the doubt. Sometimes a kook is just a kook.

A HB needs to apologize to those he has mislead, and come clean about his motives and the underpinning of his former beliefs. A reformed HB should have to work especially hard at that to gain acceptance back into reasoned society.

For those who wish to maintain an illusion, ignorance is the best source of knowledge.

Post by lukepemberton on Aug 10, 2011 17:27:12 GMT -4

I am not clear that they have done any great damage to the world nor that they have done anything for which I could give them my forgiveness. It is not as if being a denier of Apollo is really going to lead others into something radical that would materially harm people. In contrast to a holocaust denier, where a political motivation would by more likely to be lurking under the doubt. Sometimes a kook is just a kook.

A HB needs to apologize to those he has mislead, and come clean about his motives and the underpinning of his former beliefs. A reformed HB should have to work especially hard at that to gain acceptance back into reasoned society.

That is an interesting and well balanced answer. I would have severe reservations with accepting any form of apology from David Percy or Marcus Allen. It is my belief that they climbed on the hoax wagon for profit and have exploited gullible people. If Bill Kaysing was alive, and renounced his claims with an apology, then I think I would be more accepting.

I do believe their views are harmful though. In some instances they are exploitive, and in some instances I feel that they are damaging people's attitudes towards science and engineering. That is harmful to productive society. On the flip side though, I guess there are always going to be individuals that are lost by the wayside and will be picked up by those that promulgate kooky ideas. Not everyone will feel part of mainstream society, and not will everyone have the capacity for rational and logicalthought. In my mind it is a difficult issue.

'In the poor actors moon books of lies, many say the moon smelled like spent gunpowder. How does an aroma fill﻿ the air in a vacuum?' - NASAHOAX

'All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.' - Galileo Galilei

'It's fundamentally dishonest to use that man's authority without also his expertise.' - Jay Windley

Post by lukepemberton on Aug 10, 2011 18:34:04 GMT -4

To add to my earlier comment, a recanting hoax believer should also apologize to those he has slandered and personally attacked. Although forgiveness would be hard won if it came at all.

I certainly believe that any HB should apologise for personal attacks. However, a vast majority are probably those that are gullible, and through no fault of their own may have been dragged into hoax by manipulative individuals. It is the latter that I think should offer an apology, but I think I would have problems accepting their repentance. I think your words have helped me crystallise my own thoughts and how I should approach those that recant.

Post by carpediem on Aug 10, 2011 19:01:22 GMT -4

A clarification for my previous post: my project scientists would like to point out that there are several technical challenges associated with getting improved resolution images at the lower altitude orbit.

Ex: I will not slow down from my ~1.6 km/s (~ 3500 mph) speed when I get closer to the Moon's surface, which might cause some image blurring particularly for the LROC Narrow Angle Camera images.

Post by lukepemberton on Aug 10, 2011 19:10:43 GMT -4

Agree. It will be interesting to see what comes out. It won't convince the doubters, but then that was known before the first LRO images. I guess they don't want their little world torn down. Tough, the LRO has provided the goods and shown their claims to be noise. What idiots they must feel.

'In the poor actors moon books of lies, many say the moon smelled like spent gunpowder. How does an aroma fill﻿ the air in a vacuum?' - NASAHOAX

'All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.' - Galileo Galilei

'It's fundamentally dishonest to use that man's authority without also his expertise.' - Jay Windley

Post by gwiz on Aug 11, 2011 7:17:32 GMT -4

It would speed up a little. However, the main factor is that because of the lower height, the angular rate that the scenery goes past is a lot higher. Unless there is some compensatory system on the LRO, this will give more blurring of the image for a given exposure time.

Post by ka9q on Aug 11, 2011 19:50:40 GMT -4

Unless there is some compensatory system on the LRO, this will give more blurring of the image for a given exposure time.

LRO doesn't use an ordinary camera, i.e., a 2D sensor array with a lens focusing an image on it. It uses a 1-dimensional "pushbroom" sensor oriented at right angles to the orbital motion of the spacecraft, and it builds up the image as the scenery moves by. This is why the LRO images are all long strips. These sensors are used by quite a few spacecraft, such as the polar orbiting weather satellites.

Assuming that the lens is not the limiting factor (i.e., it's operating within its diffraction limit), the transverse resolution is set by the pixel spacing. The resolution along the direction of motion is limited by the finite pixel height and/or the exposure time, i.e., how much the spacecraft moves during the exposure, whichever is worse. I don't know the limits of the sensors on LRO, but in this lower orbit it might achieve better transverse than longitudinal resolution for this reason.

Post by trebor on Aug 12, 2011 16:13:56 GMT -4

That is excellent. Really loook forward it. It's a shame it will only be in the lower orbit for 5 days, since it took several months to take the Apollo images at different sun angles and captue different features from the distrubed regolith.

I imagine such a low lunar orbit could not possibly be that stable, so they probably would not want to risk it for much longer.

Post by PhantomWolf on Aug 12, 2011 22:42:52 GMT -4

I imagine such a low lunar orbit could not possibly be that stable, so they probably would not want to risk it for much longer.

Why not?

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. -- JayUtah

"On two occasions, I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)

Post by Count Zero on Aug 12, 2011 22:43:24 GMT -4

I know that for the Mars Global Surveyor, which had a similar strip camera, they learned a trick whereby they pitched the spacesraft while imaging to reduce the motion of the camera's "aim point" across the ground. This made the lines more tightly-spaced and thus improved the logitudinal resolution, allowing them to better image & identify spacecraft on the ground.